Class Role-locking

[Fyrebrand]

The "holy trinity" of Tank, Healer, and DPS is a very restrictive and rigid model that is unforgiving to those who wish to deviate from it. It may have been a necessary evil in the early days of MMOs, but in my opinion it has become stifling, and is more of a burden than it's worth. Most current MMO developers still rely on it like a crutch, for lack of imagination -- but it can directly contradict the introduction of new battle mechanics and creative reworkings of what traditional "classes" mean.

For example, cross-class skills in FFXIV have tremendous potential and are tons of fun to experiment with in the early game. Arcanist's "Physick" is a healing spell that is exactly as potent as the Conjurer's "Cure," and when you cross-train Protect and Raise as well, there's little reason they can't be a main healer. Once Topaz Carbuncle becomes available, they can tank as well. It's a lot like the skill systems people enjoyed in such games as FFV and FF Tactics, where you can borrow heavily from multiple classes you've trained in, and experiment to create your own effective class combinations.

But because such possibilities clash with the role-based structure that Duty Finder depends on, these features get phased out quickly. Once Jobs become available, you can pretty much kiss cross-class skills goodbye entirely, for all intents and purposes. I consider it an awkward and "un-FF" direction to take the Job system.

As a Summoner, I have like 6 skills I can use from other classes. Half of them are from Thaumaturge, which I need to level to become a SMN in the first place. The other 3 are (quite arbitrarily) from Archer, and one of them is an ability that increases dexterity and physical accuracy for some reason. It's absurd. Why not let me take something I want, rather than make up some rule that "Summoners get Archer skills, and that's that"?

The thing is, throughout the FF series, PLD has always been about high defense, low attack and defending the rest of the party (Cecil Harvey in FFIV is the archetype for the Job in the series), in other words, a tank.

For the sake of argument, Cecil deals insane damage as a paladin in FFIV, and the usefulness of his Cover ability is limited at best (I don't think I ever used it). I believe paladins in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance are quite strong attackers as well. Besides that, most main-series FFs don't even have true "paladins," and most single-player JRPGs have no concept of "aggro" whatsoever, and thus no concept of actively "tanking."